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Re: Debian Policy 4.0.1.0 released



Am 31.08.2017 um 18:53 schrieb Andrey Rahmatullin:
[...]
>> Well there is of course a nuclear option.  I don't have the effort for
>> this, but, the nuclear option for trad Debian menu supporters would be
>> to:
>>
>> * Package xdg-menu-convert but provide it with a mechanism that allows
>>   a menu item to be placed differently in the xdg menu taxonomy to in
>>   the trad taxonomy.
> Isn't at this time obvious that there is no trad Debian menu supporters
> willing or able to package xdg-menu-convert?
> 
>> * Find example packages which currently provide xdg desktop files but
>>   no trad menu file, and for which there was a rejected bug report
>>   containing a trad menu file.  (Best for packages which used to have
>>   a trad menu file.)
> Yes, it would be an interesting study to find such bug reports.

I was once in favor of keeping the Debian menu because it was a well
supported solution for slim window manager desktop environments. I also
took part in the original TC bug report discussion and worked on [1] to
improve the desktop integration for both menu and desktop files in Debian.

From my experience most maintainers accepted patches to support both
menu systems. However an awful lot of packages are simply unmaintained
and I have never got any feedback. A minority of two maintainers marked
my wishlist bug reports as "wontfix" which didn't really motivate me to
submit patches in those cases. But apart from that it was possible to
support both menu systems, at least for games. See [2] for the remaining
and closed bug reports.

However after the TC decision and the appearance of this Lintian tag [3]
the number of packages with menu files steadily declined. Nowadays only
half of the packages which were once supported in Jessie ship a menu
file. It just doesn't make any sense now to invest time in reviving the
so called trad menu system because we have effectively stopped
supporting it a long time ago.

Now the only way forward is to improve the desktop file integration and
to package something like the openbox-menu for other window managers
which can be used to display desktop file entries. The good thing is
that desktop files are supported by other distributions too, so we have
some synergy effects here. Supporting AppStream should be another goal
because again there are synergy effects and all sorts of applications
will become more visible across different desktop environments which is
of course a good thing.

Though the trad menu is dead. Let it rest in peace.

Markus


[1] https://wiki.debian.org/Games/JessieReleaseGoal
[2]
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=pkg-games-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org;tag=desktop-integration
[3]
https://lintian.debian.org/tags/command-in-menu-file-and-desktop-file.html

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